Questions tagged [bash-scripting]

Bash has several features which allow making small uncompiled programs (scripts) to automate functionality. It features basic programming constructs like variables, IF-statements and loops.

Bash scripts are usually created in files with the .sh extension. To make the file executable as it were a program, put the following line at the top of the file:

#!/bin/bash

This will instruct the kernel to start a Bash shell and use the rest of the file as input. After adding the 'shebang' line, change the permissions of the file to be executable with chmod +x filename.sh. You can then run the script with ./filename.sh.

Example IF-statement

VARIABLE1='hello world'
if [[ $VARIABLE1 == 'hello world' ]]
then
  echo 'Hello World!' 
fi

In this example we see:

• Variable $VARIABLE1 is set to the value hello world
• The content of $VARIABLE1 is matched against the string hello world
• If this is true, then print Hello World! to the screen.

Example Loop

Several kinds of loops can created in bash:

For loop

VARIABLE1="anna bob charlie dave eve"
for NAME in $VARIABLE1
do
  echo $NAME
done

The for statement will iterate through the names in $VARIABLE1 and run the code block between do and done for each name. This will output all 5 names separated by newlines.

You can also create a C-style for-loop:

for ((i = 0 ; i < 10 ; i++)); do
  echo $i
done

This will print numbers 1 through 9 separated by newlines.

While loop

VARIABLE1=1

while [ $VARIABLE1 -lt 10 ]
do
  echo "$VARIABLE1"
  VARIABLE1=$[$VARIABLE1+1]
done